The Sopranos: Who's that lady? (That wifey lady?)

Whatever Big Love put in the water over there at HBO, it’s catching: Now Tony Soprano has multiple wives.

One we know (the very real Carmela). One is just a voice on the other end of a phone call in an increasingly immersive dream sequence experienced by a comatose Tony.

To recap: Tony was shot by an addled Junior, is hospitalized, and is – as Billy Crystal put it in The Princess Bride – “mostly dead.” In his (probably oxygen-deprived and permanently damaged) mind, Tony imagines himself a law-abiding salesman for a defense contractor, marooned in a sterile business hotel when his wallet and briefcase are switched with those of another traveler. He calls his wife for advice and sympathy – but it’s not his wife. Not the one we know anyway.

So who is it?

Some say Charmaine Bucco (Katherine Narducci), restauranteur Artie Bucco’s wife, crazy Gloria Trillo (Annabella Sciorra), or dear, departed Adriana (Drea de Matteo). But HBO, speaking to the New York Post, says it’s none of the above. The actress on the phone, they say, is “not famous enough” to be identified by Sopranos fans.

Them’s fightin’ words! If they’re giving us the old “move along, nothing to see here,” I think it’s time to begin the paranoid speculation, don’t you? What is the Internet for otherwise?

My guesses, in this order:

1. Either Laurie Williams or Leila Robins, the actresses who have played Livia Soprano in her younger days. (Freudians, rejoice!)

2. Valerie Plame, re-establishing her cover by posing as an obscure actress

3. Tony himself, in a wig.

4. The nice lady who tells me to hang up and dial again.

5. Miss Soppressata 1974

But please, don’t let me have all the fun. Who do you think it is and/or what she represents?